Tag Archives: George Stanley

Published during the so-called “magazine wars” of the early 1960s, George Stanley’s THE SAN FRANCISCO CAPITALIST BLOODSUCKER-N lasted just one issue. Stan Persky, Lew Ellingham, and Gail Chugg edited M, gathering contributions from a box at Gino & Carlo’s Bar in San Francisco’s North Beach. Richard Duerden was editing FOOT; with Ron Loewinsohn he was also editing THE RIVOLI REVIEW, produced in Duerden’s apartment on Rivoli Street in the Haight-Ashbury district. Loewinsohn and Richard Brautigan soon produced another magazine, CHANGE.

As Ron Loewinsohn recalled, “Everybody seemed to have access to a mimeograph machine. You could then put out your own magazine. This was marvelous: it meant instant publication, instant reaction from people.”

It wasn’t until 1964, that Stan Persksy’s OPEN SPACE took up the publishing necessary to the Jack Spicer circle and its friends…

The Spicer Circle magazine M appeared in 1962 in the period after J and before Open Space. Edited by poets Lew Ellingham and Stan Persky, the magazine published John Allen Ryan, George Stanley, Heinrich von Kleist (translated by Jim Herndon), Robin Blaser, William McNeill, Jack Moore, Gail Chugg, Bob Conner, David Melville and the editors. Ellingham spent years researching a biography of Spicer, which was eventually co-authored with poet Kevin Killian as Poet Be Like God (Wesleyan, 1998).

“Contributions may be sent to 4 Harwood Alley of c/o ‘M’ at Gino & Carlo’s Bar, 548 Green Street, San Francisco 11. There is a box in the bar to receive contributions, and the bartender will hold any too large to be placed in the box.”